Learning to Live
by Riddle Wraith
Summary: Sequal to my one-shot 'The Gift of Time'. The Master has found himself a life, but he's not content with it. He finds himself hating the daily routine, and during his own, he meets a strange blonde haired girl who feels like a Time Lord, but who is she?


Bit more than a one-shot this time around. This is continued from my one-shot. I got the idea and I decided to give it a shot. With the title, it should be self-explanatory. The Master, having essentially lost almost everything that he is, must once again learn how to live, and it will not be easy on him. When this starts, it will already have been a few months since the end of "The Gift of Time". I may do a flashback later if any of you _really_ care about what he did in those few months, but unless I'm asked I probably won't. I'm using artistic licensing a bit here, as we don't know exactly what year they were in on New Earth anyway, and we don't know what year "The Doctor's Daughter" took place in exactly anyway. No one ever elaborated on exactly what happened to Jenny, so I'm using her here as she just sort of took off with a ship. I wouldn't be surprised if she encountered the Master here, so that's what I'm doing. The Master and Jenny will be the two main chars of the story, and if they come across the Doctor at all, it will probably be Doc 11, as though I haven't finished watching what I can on Netflix, I highly doubt that he has regenerated in any of the episodes airing yet or news of who Doc 12 is would be everywhere. That being said, I need to get to the story now before I decide that I don't want to write it anymore. Btw, this is new earth after that virus wiped everyone on the surface out and The Face of Boe gave his life to save the under city people and let them up onto the surface with Doc 10's help.

Oh, and this is just a trial story. I might not continue it if no one likes it.

RW

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><p><strong>Learning to Live<strong>

Ch. 1

The Blonde haired man sighed as he lifted yet another heavy crate and stacked it on top of another crate, setting it down and adjusting it so that it was evenly lined up with the rest of them. He was unloading another pallet of goods that had been ordered for the small shop and stacking the boxes in a specific order so his boss could find what he needed when he needed it. As much as he hated doing grunt work, he had nothing and he needed a way to make money so he wouldn't starve. As it was, he was still living out of a bloody cave, though he didn't tell his boss that. He hadn't made enough to even rent a place yet, so he was still roughing it. He'd had to steal before he had gotten this job, and he'd had to be very careful about it. Time Lord he may be, but after all he'd been through, he wasn't trying to waste a regeneration on something as stupid as being killed for being a petty thief.

What was he to do though? Would you blame him for stealing to survive? Okay, so he wasn't out to the best start for his 'new life', but it wasn't like she had left him anything; the woman/entity who had dropped him here. Not that he wasn't thankful, mind you. He quite enjoyed NOT burning to death every damned day in a dungeon, but he could do nothing else BUT steal when he was starving and had not a credit on him. He knew stealing was wrong, but then, after the life he lived his view of right and wrong was skewed. He would never be normal, even for a Time Lord. Even now that he was sane, he could still remember his former thought processes and they still affected him to a degree. He still hated the Doctor. That would never change.

That did not mean that he would kill innocents just because the Doctor was fond of them though. Not that he could if he wanted to, mind you. He was quite stuck here on this planet, in this time. He hated it, to be quite honest; this daily life thing that the humans (neo, sub, and otherwise) put up with every day. It was too...domestic for his tastes. He hated having to live like them, and the knowledge that he was better than this burned at his insides every day. He was a Lord of Time, and he was here, on New Earth working for some sub-human who would never know the full extent of just what he could do. He felt the Doctor out there, even through time and space, but he tried his damnedest to hide his presence from said menace.

He had no patience to deal with the Doctor at the moment. All he cared about was the fact that he didn't have to feel completely alone. The Doctor was always there, always surviving despite all of the dangerous situations he found himself in seemingly every day. He could have sworn from time to time that he felt another small spark out there as well, but any time he would search for it, he would find nothing and assume that it was just small psychic bursts escaping the time lock as nothing bigger than that could escape it. He was sure Lady Time wouldn't bring any other Time Lords out of the time lock, despite the fact that he knew it must hurt her to watch her children burn over and over and over again.

"Are you done yet?" Came the irritable voice of his boss from inside the shop, and he sighed and cracked his neck.

"Not yet. I've still got almost a full pallet to unload. I'm not superhuman you know." he said in an annoyed voice. While he could have moved faster, he wasn't about to reveal this to anyone. Not that anyone would guess he was a Time Lord, but he was still wary. He didn't want wind of anything strange catching the wrong sort of people. As much as he hated this peasant work, it was better than having to run. His hypnotism, whilst still effective, wouldn't get him everywhere. Some alien species had natural psychic abilities and were therefore immune to such things, and as most humans were not strictly human anymore, he had to watch who he tried his mind tricks on. He had decided not to chance it here as he had no guaranteed means of escape. These people weren't like the Doctor. They wouldn't just let him go on his merry way or try to arrest him. They would kill him.

Not that he wouldn't do the same, if the situations were reversed. Of course he would. He may be sane now but that didn't mean he was a good person. He'd spent his whole life being the villain to the Doctor's hero, and he really didn't know how else to live, hence his current lifestyle. With a small sneer at the dusty crates, he got back to work taking the blasted things off the pallet and stacking them where they needed to go. It took him another fifteen minutes to finish the last pallet, and by the time he was done, he could feel the annoyed eyes of his boss on him. He turned to look at the bluish skinned sub-human with his annoyance well hidden. It wouldn't do to lose his first and only job, even if he did have to work for a lesser being.

"What else do you need done?" he asked, keeping his emotions in check as he brushed the dust off onto his stolen, faded jeans from his hands.

"Start unpacking the medical products from those crates and put them on the shelves. We're running low." he said in a rasping voice, before turning and leaving his employee to his work. The blonde man shook his head and got to it. He only had two more hours here and he was done, so he wouldn't complain. He was still confused as to what he should refer to himself as, even in his own mind. The Master was a name borne out of his own madness, and many who knew that name and feared it would likely kill him just for using it, so that was out. He was tentative on using Koschei, but no other name was truer to who he was. Even his given name wasn't as accurate, and it wasn't like he would ever reveal that to anyone. Only one person in the universe knew his given name, and he in return was the only one to know that man's. To everyone else they were The Doctor and The Master.

He shook himself out of his thoughts once more and grabbed a full crate of the medical supplies, hauling it in to the nearby shelf where he started to stack the products as instructed. It was easier by far then grabbing them by the armful. He couldn't help but look up as the bell on the door rung, signaling someone entering or leaving the shop. As he looked around the shelf he was currently behind, he beheld a striking blonde woman in military esque clothing, and as she turned toward him, their eyes met, just for a second. In that second, his mind had seemingly burst, and he felt her presence like an overwhelming flood of psychic energy, and his eyes widened as he realized what this meant. Who was this woman? She was a Time Lord, or Lady rather, and he definitely didn't recognize her.

He could tell by the confusion on her face that though she had felt it too, she had no idea what it meant. She made her way back to him in a daze, and he stood up as he approached him. He was a few inches taller than her, he noticed, as he looked down a bit to stare into her face. He knew he couldn't have the conversation he needed to have with her here and now, so instead he spoke.

"Can we talk? Later? I get out of work in two hours. I'll be here." he said, and she nodded dazedly, but shook her head to clear herself of the feeling.

"Yeah." She said, a bit breathlessly. With a nod, he took a deep breath, stepped away from her, and got back to what he was supposed to be doing. She took that as her cue to get back to her shopping, although he could tell she kept looking back at him as he could feel her eyes on him every now and again. When she left the store, he felt a bit empty at the loss of her presence, but he couldn't explain why even to himself, as by the feel of it, she hung around close to the area, seemingly waiting for that talk. When his shift was finally over, his boss charged his ID card with credits for the day's work and gave it back to him quickly. He liked this daily payment system as it would allow him to leave the job whenever he needed. He had to admit that he was indebted to his boss, for helping him establish an identity here.

True, they got refugees now and then from other planets that had lost their ID's somehow or another, but for one so human looking as him, it was a bit harder to convince the right people that he had, in fact, just arrived there, and that he did not have an ID. One had to have identification to hold money here, as the ID card held the credits so the government knew who was spending how much on what, and where. The systems couldn't put them on anything else. With a deep, fortifying breath, he clipped his ID card back onto the lanyard around his neck (so he couldn't lose it, as pockets were absurdly easy to pick) and left the building to find the only interesting thing that he had encountered since arriving.

'Should be fun.' he thought with a slight grimace, before strolling off to follow the waves of psychic energy to her.

End Ch.

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><p><strong>AN:** Eh, I feel like I put too much of his thought here. I dunno, I mean it is a story, but I feel like I didn't put enough interaction or dialogue here. What do you think? Should I continue, or should I not bother? Btw, the ID thing is mine. I figure regular credit cards isn't how they usually store credits, and as far as I know that seems to be the universal currency. *Shrugs* If I got something horribly out of cannon without announcing it beforehand (Which I honestly don't think I did) let me know if you please.


End file.
